ARTICULATE: March 2016

27.3.16

2016 SYDNEY ARI SHOW opens Friday 1 April 6-8pm

Opening 6-8pm Friday 1 April

Open 11am - 5pm Friday - Sunday 2-17 April

Sunday 3 April 2-5pm: ARI discussion & future planning - directors and reps of all Sydney ARIs are welcome to participate.

The 2016 SYDNEY ARI SHOW will show the work of some of the artists who currently run ARIs in the greater Sydney area. These artists include Brad Allen-Waters, Louise Kate Anderson, Clementine Barnes, Diego Bonetto, Linden Braye, Jenny Brown, Kieran Butler, Penelope Cain, Julian Day, John Demos, Lesley Dimmick, Lynne Eastaway, Wayne Hutchins, Lucas Ihlein, Therese Kenyon, Mahalya Middlemist, Sue Pedley, Sherryl Ryan, Tamsin Salehian, Alex Thorby, Tony Twigg, Gary Warner, Fleur Wiber, Ingrid van der Aa and Miriam Williamson.

These artists are directors or in other ways run Ultimo Project, TAP, SNO, SLOT, SafARI, NORTH, MOP, MAP, CULTURE AT WORK, BIG FAG PRESS or Articulate. Other ARIs are also invited to participate in the discussion on Sunday 3 April.

See Small is Beautiful, a discussion of the importance of ARIs in Australia at the moment, in The Conversation by maria miranda.

The purpose of this project is to foster closer ties between the many and varied artist-run-initiatives (ARIs) that play such an important role in the Sydney and wider art world. ARIs play this role by supporting artists' communities, as well as the experimental and new work for which artists' communities provide such an appreciative and well-informed audience. This project hopes that by strengthening these ties we can together become a stronger and louder voice, and build appeal among art-interested audiences everywhere. We hope that this will become an annual event and extend more widely across ARIs, and involve ARIs outside of Sydney as well.

Read about ARI research project by Maria Miranda on The ARI Experience, and the international festival of artist-run spaces on ARTIST RUN.

Keiran Butler (MOP) Feelings Count (MOP)

Sherryl Ryan Tree modified by a scientist during an email conversation, 2016 digital print, iPhone 6

Jenny Brown (Articulate) Always mind the bullocks 2015

Brad Allen-Waters (MAP)

Miriam Williamson (MAP) Ghost Dress (detail)

Fleur Wiber (North) Paddle Boat (demo)Video installation on iPad

Lynne Eastaway

Sue Pedley Unseen Light

Julian Day Regret Cycle

19.3.16

Saturday Artists talks in Room To Move

Saturday 12 March: Gary Warner, Margaret Roberts, Jenny Brown

Saturday 19 March: Fiona Kemp, Virginia Hilyard, Linden Braye

Saturday 26 March: Emma Wise, Sue Callanan, Lesley Giovanelli, Julian Woods

The artists talks during Room To Move are generating interesting discussion and good attendance. On the first Saturday we listened to Gary Warner's orchestra of instruments fed by turntables and gravity, and heard about how he arrived at them. Then we heard Margaret Roberts talk about her ninth (and so far final) re-make of one of Katarzyna Kobro's works, and how she got to this project. Finally Jenny Brown spoke about making her video designed to give voice to the mourning we will experience for the loss of place as climate change progresses. Images are below.

Today Fiona Kemp talked about how she arrived at using horse figurines and horse-feed bags to engage with memory processes. Then Virginia Hilyard spoke about her practice of making rubbings of doors and clothing and its similarity to her related practice of recording sound in walls etc using contact microphones. Linden Braye then talked about how she got a video recording of a father and son playing a coin tossing game in the CBD and her interest in relating the content of such found footage with the surfaces on which it is later projected. We got so involved in the discussion that no one remembered to take any photos.

Next Saturday Emma Wise will talk about her interactive access work, Sue Callanan about her swimming projection, Lesley Giovanelli about her fabric sculpture and Julian Woods about his pillar-of-water projection. Come along at 2pm for the talks and discussion.

back: Gary Warner an aleatoric ensemble (variations) 2016
front: Lesley Giovanelli Dwarka 2016

Margaret Roberts discussing #9 2016

Jenny Brown discussing her The hitchhiker’s guide to the Symbiocene 2016

8.3.16

Room To Move opens Friday 11 March 6-8pm

Articulate Directors Show

Open Friday - Sunday 12 -27 March, 11am-5pm

Artists talks: Saturdays at 2pm

Saturday 12 March: Gary Warner, Margaret Roberts, Jenny Brown

Saturday 19 March: Fiona Kemp, Virginia Hilyard, Linden Braye

Saturday 26 March: Emma Wise, Sue Callanan, Lesley Giovanelli, Julian Woods

Room to Move ROOMSHEET

Room to Move includes work by Linden Braye, Jenny Brown, Sue Callanan, Lesley Giovanelli, Virginia Hilyard, Fiona Kemp, Francesca Mataraga, Margaret Roberts, Gary Warner, Emma Wise and Julian Woods - artists who, in 2016, are either Directors of, or in other ways work to run Articulate .

Articulate began five years ago when a group of artists with a common background in the Sculpture Studio at Sydney College of the Arts found an opportunity to fill a gap in the Sydney art scene that had long effected them and other installation artists. The gap was caused by the increasingly institutional nature of otherwise sympathetic exhibition spaces, that might welcome installations but then expect them to be constructed within a few days. Twenty-four-hour access to devise and construct work in situ had become harder to find. We wanted a place where artists are welcome to work with the relationships that can be formed between artwork and location by actually devising and making artwork in it.

These frustrations and enthusiasms brought us to accept an opportunity to rent a newly renovated space on the ground floor of 497 Parramatta Road Leichhardt. The name 'articulate' was proposed, to emphasise our intention to give voice to space— to 'articulate the space'. We called it a 'project space' rather than 'gallery' to signal our interest in the open-ended and process-oriented nature of experimentation and live art, to invite artists to experiment with exhibition-practice as much as art-practice, and to remind ourselves that an exhibition space is also a live space that is not contained by the building walls.

We described our agenda as spatial, experimental, critical, cross-disciplinary and artist-centred. We wanted to suggest that, as much as possible, Articulate is a place where artists and our practices are respected and where the lateral thinking of art practice is standard; where content is sought in form, material, action and construction, etc., as much as in representation; where critique and reflection are taken seriously; and where art conventions are questioned—especially the conventions of spatial autonomy (eg through installation practices) and of art speciality (eg through ‘idea dictates form’, where people see themselves as artists first, and think of their art-disciplines as part of their toolkit). Underlying it all however was a desire to also show what we think is the most interesting artwork available.

In the five years since then, there have been over 120 projects and exhibitions showing the work of the 350 artists currently listed on the index of both Articulate blogs. Collectively they represent a variety of practices that either overlap with Articulate's spatial and experimental focus, or form part of their wider sympathetic context. And we plan to continue for a while longer.

Over this time the group running Articulate has also expanded to now include 12 artists, and Room to Move shows examples of their work. Artist talks will be held in the project space each Saturday at 2pm.